European Green Activists Training

The European Green Activist Training consists of training sessions for young Green activists in two phases: the first entails national trainings on domestic politics, as well as a session on European politics and institutions; and the second brings together the activists from different countries in Brussels to complement their training by experiencing the European political dimension first-hand. The European Green Activist Training project aims at the Europeanisation of existing trainings for Green activists in several European countries by making them more European in their content, but also more co-operative, by enabling young activists to meet and network.

This project is already the third installment of the project launched in the fall of 2015. Back then, we had identified a need to educate young, Green-minded people on European politics and active citizenship in order to enable them to promote Green values and politics in society. We want to add the European dimension to existing trainings at the national level, which means debates on current political topics with international guests and workshops about the EU in general.

2017: More countries on board – get involved!

The 2017 edition of this transnational project will be realised in cooperation with Visio (Finland), Ökopolisz (Hungary), the Institute for Active Citizenship (Czech Republic), the Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe & Green Window (Croatia) and Ceratonia Foundation (Malta). These national Green foundations will gather young people interested in politics in their respective countries and train them across several weekends. The international dimension of this project has developed into one of the most important: participants will be trained, almost at the same time, about the same topics, such as functions, institutions and current debates inside the EU, which will be crucial for their further international cooperation during the study visit in Brussels in spring 2018 and beyond.

More impact on Europe

Besides its educational and networking objectives, the aim of the project is to multiply its impact: to share results of the Green activists’ training with other GEF partner foundations; to reach out to more young activists; to have a bigger impact at both the local and European level through alumni strategy; and to motivate participants to conduct or participate in some public activity where they could practice newly gained competences from the training. Additionally, the upcoming edition will also integrate the GEF e-learning course Impact Europe in its curriculum.

Previously, the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 editions of this transnational project were realised together with Visio (Finland), Ökopolisz (Hungary), the Institute for Active Citizenship (Czech Republic) and Grüne Bildungswerkstatt (Austria) (2015)/ Fundacio Nous Horitzons (Catalonia, Spain) (2016). The foundations shared their existing curricula and developed the content for the training session on EU topics together, which was then applied in all participating countries. The trainings were successfully concluded by a common study trip to Brussels and enabled the young participants from all over Europe to meet and exchange and provided them with a first-hand opportunity to gain knowledge of European politics during their visits to the European Parliament and other European institutions.

Find out what the organisers, coordinators and some of the participants have to say about the European Green Activist Training and receive an impression of their study trip to Brussels.

The trainings offer a great opportunity for Green-minded young people to acquire very practical skills, such as negotiating and networking, and to learn how to impact national and European politics. In order to disseminate the experience of this successful project, and help other organisations getting inspiration for their own trainings, the participating partners developed a handbook for organising the European Green Activist Trainings, which can be downloaded here or ordered as a hard copy.